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Pastimes : Rarely is the question asked: "is our children learning" -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Sladek who wrote (2067)	2/15/2004 11:20:22 AM
From: SalemsHex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2171

Send the Children of Politicians to the Front Lines? by Stanley Kober Stanley Kober is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. In recent speeches, President George Bush has proclaimed his desire to spread the blessings of freedom throughout the world, emphasizing that Americans pursued this objective throughout the 20th century. As he told the National Endowment for Democracy in November: "In the trenches of World War I, through a two-front war in the 1940s, the difficult battles of Korea and Vietnam, and in missions of rescue and liberation on nearly every continent, Americans have amply displayed our willingness to sacrifice for liberty." Yes, we have, but we have not always been successful -- and our leaders have not always displayed their willingness to sacrifice themselves for liberty. It is noteworthy that the president included Vietnam in his list. A generation of American leaders, haunted by the Anglo-French betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938, decided the United States had to honor its security guarantee to South Vietnam to prevent a repeat of history. They thought they were defending freedom. But the Vietnam War traumatized the American people, who ultimately decided they could not bear the sacrifice the war demanded. A generation has passed, and approximately the same amount of time separates Iraq from Vietnam as separated Vietnam from Munich. Those two precedents define the paradox of intervention. Munich will forever exemplify the consequences of appeasement, but Vietnam serves as a reminder of the dangers of over-commitment. Curiously, however, now that it has ascended to power, the generation that lived through Vietnam no longer seems to be influenced by it. President Bill Clinton was initially cautious about using military force. But by the end of his presidency he had initiated war in the Balkans. President Bush has been even more emphatic about the need to use military force. "In the new world we have entered," he argued in the September 2002 National Security Strategy, "the only path to peace and security is the path of action." Yet for all his talk about sacrifice, Bush never served in Vietnam. He spent the war flying National Guard aircraft over Texas. "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed ... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units," Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in his memoirs. "Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country." Powell's point is well taken. The draft was supposed to impose equality in military service, but it didn't. The volunteer service has worked well, but it is also much smaller than the armed forces of the Cold War years. Even so, by the late 1990s, recruitment was running into difficulty. All the services were able to meet their recruiting quotas for the past fiscal year, but that was attributable in large part to the economic downturn. "That's the driver, the economy," asserted Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, the head of the Army Recruiting Command. But if the economy is driving recruitment, the inequality that plagued the draft might be returning. According to a study by retired University of Texas sociologist Robert Cushing, less populated rural counties in the U.S. are suffering casualties in Iraq at a higher rate than more suburban -- and presumably wealthier -- counties. "In the politically polarized America of today, there are unmistakably two planets," concluded Bill Bishop of the "Austin American-Statesman," who reported Cushing's findings. "There's the planet that watches the war on television and debates the merits of an $87 billion appropriation, and then there's the planet that sends its kids to Afghanistan and Iraq." That disconnect is beginning to have an effect. "I noticed a long time ago that our policymakers often seem divorced from the men and women who serve in the armed forces," a woman whose brother serves in the Marines wrote in the Washington Post last January. Others with loved ones in the service are even more personal and bitter. "Would Bush be doing this if he were sending his daughters?" asked 22-year old Sally Brown, whose husband is in the Marines, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. One of the great challenges facing a democracy -- indeed, any society -- is the connection between the military and civilian society. Any sense of inequality and inequity is bound to erode that connection. Thus, an all-volunteer military is the wisest policy. Yet it can best sustain itself when the politicians lead by example. If the political leadership does not demonstrate the courage of its convictions by risking its own flesh and blood, it cannot expect the professionals in the military to do so for long. During the Vietnam War, people asked: What if they gave a war and nobody came? If the members of the armed forces feel betrayed by their leaders, we may find out. cato.org